


Rent by Judgment

by FSTP



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical "Death", Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24962791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FSTP/pseuds/FSTP
Summary: While looking for something useful in the fog, Claudette ends up in a killer’s sights. From there, things go from bad to worse - but not just for her.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 83





	Rent by Judgment

_Don’t go too far from the campfire._

It wasn’t a rule. None of them were in charge, so they couldn’t enforce anything; everything they managed to keep up was out of a mutual agreement to not make things any worse than they already were. It was just advice. A suggestion. A plea, sometimes. Something they told to everyone new the first time any of them asked why nobody had ever just walked away. 

Usually, they just ended up back at the campfire. Walk too far, get through the fog, end up on the other side of the trees, walking back toward the light. But sometimes … sometimes, they didn’t. Sometimes they wound up somewhere else. Sometimes the world around them was too familiar and too dangerous and _they weren’t alone_. It was always better to stay close to the light of the fire, even if it meant something might sneak up on them. 

But they were human. Sometimes tempers flared - arguments, a trial gone bad, personality clashes - or the weight of everything got to be _too much_ and someone would snap, or someone just needed some time alone, and they’d take their chances walking away from the campfire and getting lost in the darkness. Usually, _usually_ , it was fine, and everyone had time to calm down and recover, and things went back to whatever kind of normal they’d all gotten used to. 

Usually. 

Sometimes they were gone for too long. 

Claudette had heard stories. Whispers from the others, either from an experience or secondhand. Nobody wanted to talk about it out loud, like it would guarantee the fire would go out if any of them did. How someone had ended up tripping into a bear trap in a cold dark forest, or getting chased down through the cornfields, or dragged screaming into a building, knowing there were no hooks around to die on and not knowing what might come next. 

And what came next? Nobody talked about that, either. Half the time that was where the memories ended. Half the time … she didn’t want to ask. 

She’d gotten lost before, looking for something in the forest that might help them in a trial. Most of them had ended with her sneaking back into the fog and running back to the campfire when it appeared. Once she’d stumbled across the burned-out hospital and seen the Nurse drifting through the trees, sighing, but they hadn’t run into each other; she got away without a scratch. A few times, all she could remember was panic and then nothing. 

It bothered her. It bothered them all. But nobody wanted to talk about it.  
  


* * *

  


Her medkit was almost empty. The bandages were down to a little knot. There was no gauze left. The needle was still good, but there wasn’t much thread left. And the salve she’d made up was down to a single swipe of paste, dried and useless in its jar. 

Claudette knew she needed to go out and find more. There were plants in the forest, not just trees. Some of them were useful. She’d made the salve out of them - a little antiseptic, a little painkiller, and mostly just to stop the bleeding - and if she kept an eye out, she could find more. It wasn’t that hard. The problem was that sometimes there were more _through_ the fog than just around the campfire. 

Yui leaned over and looked into the kit with a grimace. 

“That’s not a lot.” 

“No. I keep hoping someone will find more bandages, but I can probably make more salve.” 

“Might be easier to use up what’s left and find a new kit.” 

“I don’t want to waste this.” She set down the kit, picked up the bag Kate let her use for gathering plants, and started to stand up, but Yui’s hand landed on her shoulder. 

“Don’t risk it,” she said. “Jake took too long to get back last time he went to commune with nature, remember? I don’t think he just fell asleep.” 

“I need to,” Claudette insisted. “The next trial could be any second. What if I run out halfway through?” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

“All the more reason to make sure I have enough.” She rested her hand on Yui’s. “I’ll be fine.” 

“If you say so.” Yui turned her hand, squeezed Claudette’s briefly and then let go. “But if something starts going wrong, you get your ass back here right away.” 

“Don’t worry,” Claudette said, slipping her hand away with a half-smile and standing up. “I will.” 

Outside the ring of light cast by the campfire, it was harder to see the right plants. She had to identify them by feel most of the time, fingers cautiously following the edges to figure out which were the right shape, the right texture, if the leaves were actually that jagged or if something had just torn them. Some were easier to pick out than others. The right ones she picked carefully, making sure to leave some behind to grow back - if anything grew back around here - and the wrong ones she left, just in case they turned out to be useful later. 

She wandered further and further from the campfire, but kept an eye out for the wall of fog that bordered what was technically safe territory. It was out there - sometimes they could see it, and sometimes they couldn’t, at least not up until they walked right into it. Right now there was just darkness and trees. Behind her she could still see flickers of firelight. She was still safe. 

She _thought_ she was still safe. 

The fog swept in suddenly, dropping down from above like a hammer made of feathers. Claudette, her hands wrapped around the fragile stems of something promising, looked around frantically at the sudden grayness all around her, wondering if she’d gone too far, or if this was a trial catching her off-guard, or if - if something _else_ was happening? She hadn’t been moving. Hadn’t seen the fog. She couldn’t have walked into it, but here it was, surrounding her. She shut her eyes tight, waited for the sudden _snap_ as the world shifted itself out of shape and dumped her somewhere she’d be expected to run for her life. 

After a few long seconds, she cracked an eye open. 

The fog was just fading, swirling away around her, disappearing between the trees. She _was_ somewhere else now, but she wasn’t getting the feeling it was a trial. There hadn’t been the feeling like a lightswitch turning on in a dark room. There hadn’t been the drop, the sensation like the world had been sucked away only for a new one to take its place. She wasn’t back near the campfire anymore, but … 

She could recognize the place, at least. The cold blue moonlight cut the world into a checkerboard of light spots and dark shadows, and in the distance she could see a huge crumbling tower that she’d run through and around a hundred times. Plenty of killers had hunted her in its shadow over her time here, but there’d been a time when only one of them did. 

Slowly, Claudette stood up from her crouch and started to move, keeping an eye out for any bear traps on the ground. 

The fog had to be around here somewhere. It was a wall, blocking them all in, keeping them all separated. If she found it, she could try to make her way back to the campfire. She’d done it before. Others had done it before. As long as she was careful, she would - 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a trap, laid open and straining to snap shut on a careless leg. But right next to it was a bundle of leaves she knew the shape of and didn’t see very often. 

If she was careful, she could pick the whole thing without setting off the trap. It was worth it to leave things growing by the campfire, but who cared what happened to a killer’s territory? She could see bootprints in the dirt nearby, plants crushed and torn without a care. He’d probably never even realize it was gone. 

She went for it. Skirted the trap, crouched down in the shadow of a tree nearby and started digging in the dirt to find as much of the root cluster as she could. Maybe, just maybe, if she pulled the whole thing out in one piece, she could replant some of it. It didn’t seem likely, but there was no downside to taking the chance. 

It came out mostly whole; she shook the dirt off and tucked it away in the bag. Claudette shifted a pile of leaves over the hole in the dirt and - 

Felt someone watching her. 

It was an instinct, a prickle on the back of her neck like a spider dropping down from above, and around here they’d learned to trust their instincts as much as each other. 

She turned sharply and looked around. All she saw were trees and rocks; all she heard was the perpetual silence of a place devoid of any real life and her own breathing. It might have been paranoia, but somehow, she didn’t think so. 

It probably wasn’t the Trapper, she thought. He didn’t do silence. He didn’t do stealth. If he’d seen her, he would have charged her; he didn’t stop and watch from a distance, even when they were running through the exits. Maybe it was just the _thing_ that controlled the place, watching her to see what she did? But it did that all the time. She’d never felt the presence any more strongly in one place over another. 

Nothing changed. Eventually, she turned away, and crept through the trees to look for the fog again, but as she went she saw another patch of familiar leaves. The place must have been covered with them. It was too tempting to resist, even with that unsettling and maybe a little _too_ familiar feeling crawling up her spine. 

She dug into the dirt, fingers feeling for the roots, and that was when she heard it: a noise like a whisper of silk on silk, a creak of what some sixth sense told her was leather. Her blood ran cold, and slowly, she turned. 

She saw a mask, burning white in the moonlight. 

Claudette took off running, dirt and leaves trailing off her fingers as she bolted. It wasn’t long before she heard footsteps that weren’t hers closing in behind her. 

She knew that mask. She’d seen it a hundred times, peeking out from around a corner, bearing down on her from above, jumping out from behind a corner to land a knife in her shoulder. It was a stupid mask, probably made out of plastic, probably easy to break, but it scared her, too, made her gut clench in fear every time she saw it. 

Because she’d seen it splattered with her friends’ blood. And seen it looming over them as they tried to crawl away, getting close, getting covered in fresh blood as its wearer stabbed them to death and pulled out a camera and took a selfie with their dying body like it was _fun_. 

The other killers were monsters, and some were total psychopaths, and she wouldn’t doubt for a second that all of them enjoyed what they did, but this one was a _freak_. 

She leaped over a trap lying open in a shadow. After a few seconds there wasn’t a snap, so he must have seen it too, and managed to avoid it. She tried to make a sharp turn, dodge around a tree, maybe throw him off for even a few seconds, but it didn’t help. It didn’t work. He was chasing her down, in a place that wasn’t his, outside a trial, where she might not get away in time, where there _weren’t any rules_ , because there were only rules in a trial and they all knew them and if she didn’t find the fog in time she was going to find out just how much of a freak he was - 

He caught her from behind, a flying leap that bore her to the ground with his arms around her waist. Claudette yelped and hit the ground hard, sliding a few more inches in the dirt before she stopped. Instantly she started to fight. Elbows back, whole body struggling to get out from under his weight, feet kicking up wherever they could. He swore and leaned back. She tried to turn over, to lash out with a fist, to wriggle out from under him while he tried to get his balance - 

The knife gleamed, moonlight catching on its razor edge for a second before it was at her throat. Instantly she stilled, her eyes fixed on the mask above her, shadowed but just as bright as before anyway. 

“Hey there,” said Ghost Face, his voice bright and cheerful and friendlier than it had any right to be. 

He was a talker. They’d found that out early on. A lot of the killers never said a word, and some of them liked to taunt them and play with their food, but once he caught one of them, Ghost Face never shut up. Sometimes he sounded normal, like right now, and sometimes he sounded like the monster they knew he was under the mask and the coat and what was probably the human skin underneath all that. He didn’t like getting hurt. He didn’t like them getting away. 

He _did_ like to drag things out. She just had to hope he was in the mood for that, so she might be able to get away and find the fog before he caught her again. 

“Nice night, isn’t it?” He shifted his weight and settled down, knees on either side of her body and his free hand flat against the dirt by her head. The other was as still as she was, holding the hilt of the knife so the blade scraped against her throat. “Though I guess it always is out here. He gets all the nice weather. I wonder if that means something.” 

Claudette said nothing, trying not to breathe too hard or swallow against the razor edge that could dig in at any second. 

“So … what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this, hm?” He tilted his head without moving the knife so much as a fraction of an inch. “It’s dangerous out here, you know.” 

“I - ” 

Even that slight movement made the blade scrape harder, and she grit her teeth against it. To her surprise, she felt the pressure lighten - just enough to talk. 

“Go ahead.” 

“I … wasn’t trying to get out here,” she said, picking her words carefully, trying not to let the fear that was pulsing through her with every heartbeat show. “The fog just … dropped me here.” 

“And what were you doing before that?” 

“L-looking for … plants.” 

“Plants?” For one word he sounded surprised, and then it moved back to a normal, friendly tone. “Is that what you were doing? I thought you were trying to disarm the trap. Would have been a bad move on your part, just FYI. He can hear when they shut. Tends to come running.” 

The idea hadn’t even occurred to her. Claudette filed the information away somewhere in the back of her head to think about later, when a killer wasn’t holding a knife to her throat. 

“What good are plants?” he asked. 

“I can make a salve,” she said, fear making the words tumble out even if it probably wasn’t a good idea. But what could he do with the knowledge? “For the medkits. It helps with the bleeding, a-and it can reduce any chance of infection - ” 

“That’s nice,” he interrupted. “Should I believe you?” 

“Why would I lie?” 

“Lots of reasons. To get away from me? To hide what you were really doing, in case I tell someone who matters?” His hand shifted; she felt the knife slide up along her throat, closer to her ear. “Just because? I don’t know all of you that well … yet.” 

_Yet._ The word echoed in her brain like a gunshot, cutting through the fear and leaving a cold, clear path through her thoughts. 

“But fine. Let’s say I _do_ believe you. It’s a pretty stupid move to go looking for plants in a killer’s territory. You should have just run for it.” 

“I know that now,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, hoping he’d think it was still all fear she was trying to hide. 

“Glad to hear it.” He watched her a few seconds longer. “Well, much as I’d like to keep chatting, I’d rather not do it in a place where I’ll get stuck in a trap if I put my hand wrong. How about we go somewhere more … amenable?” 

“Go somewhere?” Fresh fear gripped her, but the cold anger was still there at the core. Claudette frowned at him. “Aren’t you just going to kill me?” 

“Not right away. Where’s the fun in that? We can do all sorts of things beforehand.” He leaned back, pulled the knife away, tapped the dull side of it against his mask. “We don’t exactly have all the time in the world here, but yes, _eventually_ I’ll - ” 

She punched him in the throat. 

There were rules in the trials. They didn’t have to try and obey them, because they couldn’t _dis_ obey them. They were written into every inch of the grounds and scored into their muscles and bones. They couldn’t get out before the generators were done, unless they could find the hatch and had a key. They couldn’t stay hidden forever, because the crows would find them. And they couldn’t fight back except with flashlights and locker doors and pallets and trying to wriggle free, because the fear stole the fight from them and kept them fixated on running. Flight, not fight. 

There were no rules out here in the fog. 

Claudette wasn’t that strong, but there was a pile of anger behind the hit, built up from the knowledge that this masked asshole liked to stalk them and learn about them and use what he knew to hurt them just as bad as he did with the knife. 

He choked and grabbed at his neck, collapsing off to the side. The force of the hit hurt her fingers, but it was a tiny pain in comparison to what she knew was coming as soon as he got to his feet, and the second she felt his weight drop she was scrambling up and running for the trees. 

She heard him swear at her and it was only a matter of seconds before she heard him running again. There was no time to stop, to try and dart and dodge and hide. She had to find the fog. She had to get out of here. _Now._

He didn’t yell. Didn’t say anything, in fact, and from him, the silence was frightening. Claudette ran as fast as she could, trying to let the fear drive her, hoping the anger would help, but that was draining fast in the wake of the punch. 

And then she saw it: gray mist swirling between the trees that faded into the distance. The solid wall of fog was right in front of her, and he hadn’t caught her yet! She picked up speed and raced into it, and … she could hear him follow her, his footsteps not fading even as everything around them vanished. 

She didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Even here she could probably die, and horribly. The ground felt uneven; she’d fall if she wasn’t careful, but there wasn’t any _time_ to be careful. She shut her eyes and ran and, in her head, she begged as hard as she could, hoping the Entity was done playing the stupid game that had landed her in his sights in the first place. 

She should have thought, _get me back to the campfire!_ Or maybe even _get me somewhere safe!_ Those might have separated them, and gotten her somewhere that wasn’t as immediately dangerous as within range of a pissed-off serial killer. 

But what she thought was, _get him off of me!_

Things around her shifted. She thought she could hear him yelling at her then, telling her _no! Not that way!_ But maybe that was just hallucinations from the fog, or just her hearing what she wanted to hear. 

And then she ran out of the fog into semi-darkness. She opened her eyes and stumbled to a halt. 

The sky was gray. Stone gray, concrete gray, darker than the fog but no less thick. It wasn’t clouds overhead, but she didn’t know what it was. Maybe smoke. Maybe ash. 

She knew the place, just like she’d known the cold blue forest, but not as well. They hadn’t been here very often yet. It was … new, if anything in the fog was really _new_ and not just some fresh torture they hadn’t been subjected to yet. 

It was a school. Twisted and dilapidated and run-down and riddled with things a school should never have, like corpses and piles of flesh and even, as she stared ahead, huge chains ripping their way out of the ground to disappear into the muddled sky above. 

She’d made her way somewhere else. It wasn’t safe, she knew, but maybe it was safer than - 

There were footsteps behind her, swift and dedicated and vicious. Claudette darted away and threw herself into the shadows of the courtyard, crouching in a bunch of overgrown thornbushes, trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible. 

Ghost Face ran out of the school and stopped. She watched him look around; he still had his knife out. 

He turned, looking right at where she was, but she stayed perfectly still, out of any kind of light; after a second he looked the other way, and then she heard him hiss out a breath. 

“Shit.” For a few seconds he twisted around, looking back the way he’d come, but there was no way he was looking for her _there_ , she thought. She couldn’t have run down one of those halls without him hearing or seeing her and following her. What was he looking for? 

He stalked down the steps and crossed the courtyard, leaving her behind. Claudette waited a while before she moved, just in case he doubled back. Then, and only then, did she creep out of the bushes and head into the school itself. 

The place where the fog had dumped her was a solid wall now, the plaster cracked and the paint peeling. She’d have to find another way to escape, some other open door or window. And she’d have to do it fast, because Ghost Face _would_ find her eventually. Or … the other one would, maybe. The _thing_ that lived here, that had hunted them down the first time they had a trial here. 

But that one wasn’t as fast or as stealthy. She’d hear _him_ before he got to her. And he didn’t seem like the type to play games. 

As she moved quietly through the school, Claudette listened for any sounds out of the ordinary. It wasn’t easy. She could hear chains jingling and wind howling in the distance, the building creaking and settling, and just on the edge of hearing, a siren. Her own breathing and footsteps seemed too loud. She was sure Ghost Face would jump out on her at any second. 

Every step was careful. Every move she considered before she made it, just in case. She skirted around the edge of a set of rusted lockers and rounded a corner to a stairwell. Half of it was covered by … _stuff_ , things she didn’t want to look at too long, but there was enough space to get up to the second floor without any problems. Still she heard nothing - not a footstep or a whisper or the sound of something breathing, other than herself. 

She paused to peer cautiously into one of the rooms, but it was empty, too. Maybe the thing that lived here wasn’t around? If Ghost Face could chase her from one place to another, maybe they could all go wherever they wanted. Maybe there was only one threat here. 

For a little while longer she kept moving, but then she passed by a break in the wall that overlooked the courtyard. As she did, she glanced down - right as Ghost Face, stalking across the courtyard toward the building she was in, looked up. Instantly she crouched back behind the wall, but it was too late. 

“Hey!” he said, his voice just loud enough to hear but still quieted down to a hiss. “Get down from there!” 

She peered around the edge of the broken wall to glare at him. 

“Why should I?” 

“Because things are going to go a lot worse for you if I have to come up there. Get down here!” 

“No,” she said, and glanced around to see if she could find something to throw at him. She’d already hit him once; a second time probably couldn’t make things any worse. 

“ _Listen_ ,” he hissed, “do you want to take the risk of letting that _thing_ find you? It’s not nice like I am. It won’t give you any chances, it’ll just kill you. So stop trying to hide.” 

“At least it’ll only kill me,” she snapped, and to her surprise, saw him wince. “That’s better than what you’ve got in mind, right?” 

“You don’t know that. And keep your voice down.” 

Claudette stared at him even as her fingers closed around a chunk of crumbling drywall. Keep her voice down? He was talking more quietly than she was, which he hadn’t done before. And as she watched him she noticed he was glancing around, his shoulders hunched, the ever-floating straps on his coat somehow coiled closer to his body than before. Like he was trying to make himself smaller, the way he might when he stalked someone. But she was right here. She’d already seen him. 

“Why?” she asked suspiciously, watching him shift irritably as she refused to drop down to the courtyard. 

“ _Come down here_.” 

“No!” And this time she made it loud, almost a shout. His head shot around to look behind him, but there was nothing there. “I’m not going to walk into your knife just because you told me to - ” 

Ghost Face turned back to her and _ran_ at the building. But instead of going for the doors and having to make his way to a staircase to find her, he jumped when he got to the top of the stairs. His knife dug into the dilapidated building and he used that to pull himself up, get a hand into a broken piece of wall, and in a few quick movements, he scrambled his way up to the hole in the building. 

There were no rules in the fog. 

Claudette threw herself back as he pulled himself inside. The mask hid his expression, but something about the set of his shoulders and the lift of his knife told her he was as mad as when she’d hit him. She threw the drywall at him, but it was too light to do anything; he ignored it and advanced on her. 

She tried to get up and run, but he grabbed the strap of her bag and yanked her back, forcing her down to the floor again, this time keeping just far enough away that she couldn’t hit him when he crouched over her. Even in the dull, reddish light around them, his knife gleamed. 

“Listen to me,” he said, voice as flat and cold as his blade. “When I stand up, you’re going to come with me, and you’re going to be quiet. We’re going to find the way out of here, and pretend none of this ever happened, and when I’m doing with you you’ll tell all your little friends just what happened so that nobody tries any shit like this again, all right?” 

She could still feel the fear gripping her like razor wire, but his strange behavior had it muted. 

“Why should I be quiet?” she asked, and then something clicked. “Are you _scared_ of - ” 

It was more of a blow than a slap, and one she didn’t see coming but half-expected. Her head snapped to the side, cracked against the floor hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to stun her. 

It made sense. His apprehension about being here, his careful movements, his snarled whispers - he was afraid of the thing that lived here. Or at least he didn’t want to run into it the same way she didn’t. Why? Didn’t all these monsters get along? Weren’t they all supposed to do the same thing? 

“Don’t insult me.” The knife came close to her face, the tip just tilting her glasses up on her face. “Or maybe I should teach you a lesson right here before we leave. How’s that sound?” 

Claudette stared at him, her expression flat, the fear that constantly ran through her in this place old and familiar by now. He wasn’t lying. He’d do much worse things than kill her, and rules or not, there wasn’t much she could do to stop him. 

And then they both heard it: a long, metallic screech, metal on metal like rusted gears straining against years of disuse. She saw him freeze up, and looked past him down the hall; after a second, he half-turned to follow her gaze. 

At the far end of the hall a figure rounded a corner - the thing that lived here, the killer that haunted this place. Taller than both of them, he - well, she figured _he_ was probably the right descriptor since he looked like a man, but she had the terrible feeling that if they ever got the helmet off there’d be nothing underneath - stood still for a few long seconds, like he was watching them. His blade, almost as big as she was, trailed behind him. 

Above her Ghost Face had gone rigid again. It might have been fear. It might have been anger. Either way, she saw something she could use. 

She tried to squirm her way free from under him. His attention snapped back to her, and he stabbed at the ground next to her head. 

“Stay still!” he hissed, but then there was the sound of ripping linoleum, and they both looked back to see the monster stalking toward them. 

Without another word Ghost Face grabbed her wrist and jumped up, dragging her with him. Claudette scrambled to her feet, caught between a rock and a hard place, unwilling to go with him but not interested in running toward the other thing in the hall. She made him drag her, glancing back occasionally to see the thing coming toward them - a lot more slowly, but unstoppably. Eventually, it was going to catch them. 

“Hurry up!” 

Ghost Face hauled on her wrist, and she hauled back. He raised the knife threateningly. She glared at it. 

“Oh yeah, stab me,” she said bitterly. “That’s a real threat right now.” 

“Do you want that thing to catch you?” 

“Are you that obsessed with killing me yourself?” 

“That’s not the - ” He cut himself off, a few words too late. Claudette tried to stop dead, but he yanked her along toward the stairs. 

“You _are_ afraid of him!” 

“Shut your fucking mouth,” snarled Ghost Face, and for a second she froze. She hadn’t heard that tone from him before - like he’d gone straight through anger and rage and into a cold, limpid pool of fury, all endless black depths and hints of splintered bone. 

He looked like he was going to say something else, but his attention moved past her. The sound of a blade too big to carry carving through the floor like it was made of butter was getting closer. Instead he tightened his grip on her wrist and dragged her to the stairwell. 

Here she finally had a chance to try and stop him. She grabbed the banister as she hit the steps, wrapping her entire arm around it to try and anchor herself to it. He pulled hard, turned and saw what she was doing, and finally snapped, lunging in with his knife to slash at her. She yelped, the pain fresh and hot and stinging, but refused to let go. 

The knife hit her in the shoulder. She bit her lip and curled in, trying to keep him away from her front if nothing else. He dug it in harder, twisted, and pulled her other arm; that finally dislodged her, but too fast to stay upright. 

She fell against him, hard, and the two of them crashed down the rest of the stairs to the midway landing. Claudette could hear him grumbling under his breath and saw the knife come up again out of the corner of her eye, but before it could come down, a shadow fell across them. 

Despite everything, she didn’t look up; death was inevitable around here, and even if the pain and horror never ended, at least death _was_ an end. She’d wind up back at the campfire again. But underneath her, she felt Ghost Face start to scramble up. She braced herself for another grab, to be dragged down the stairs like a sack of flour if she wouldn’t stand. 

He shoved at her. Tried to get her off him. 

He’d given up on killing her, and now he was just trying to _get away._

Spite made her push as much of her weight down on him as she could, trying to pin his legs. Behind them she could hear the stairs creaking and splitting, even without any footsteps, and then there was a sharp intake of breath, followed by a searing pain as Ghost Face stabbed her again. 

It hurt enough that she finally rolled off him, back toward the foot of the stairs, and she watched him force himself up and scramble away, leaving her to the mercy of the monster above them. At the edge of her vision, she saw - _something_ break through the flooring, creeping down toward her, around her. Barbed wire, dripping with black blood, creaking as it wove around her prone body. She’d seen it before, in the wake of the dragged blade, seething in the mess of blood and torn ground, and she’d felt it when she ran over the mess, grabbing at her, sticking to her, clawing its way up her body to make everything _hurt_. 

She watched it, waiting for the inevitable sudden grip, to be bound tight and forced up and gutted by the thing above her. 

It crept around her, and then past her. 

Claudette stared, barely breathing, as the worst of it flowed down the steps after the fleeing Ghost Face. Heavy footsteps came down the stairs after it and paused next to her. She risked a glance up. 

The huge, almost pyramid-like helmet was turned down toward her. She couldn’t hear any words, or even any breathing; he just … stared down at her, she guessed, even if there were no eyes to stare with. He clearly knew she was there. He had to know what she was, and what he was supposed to do with her, even outside the confines of a trial. And there was nothing she could do to stop him from cutting her in half - or _worse_ \- if he wanted to at this point. 

But, like the barbed wire, he only moved past her after a few seconds of silence. Down the stairs, after the _other_ intruder into his patch of the Entity’s realm. She watched him go, shocked, right up until she heard yelling. 

It kickstarted her whole body into gear even before her brain had caught up. She was on her feet and staggering back up the stairs by the time she realized that while she might have been spared for now, there was no reason he wouldn’t come back for her once he’d caught his current prey. She had to find the way out before that happened. Maybe there was a way out upstairs. Maybe there was at least a shortcut. 

As she made her way down the hall, slower than she wanted thanks to the pain in her arm and shoulder, she heard the yelling start to get frantic. The words were just muffled enough that she couldn’t fully make them out, but some filtered through the gutted floors. 

“ -- off me, you freak! You’re supposed to kill _her_!” 

Maybe the killers _didn’t_ get along, she thought. Maybe they were territorial. She could imagine them fighting over the chance to kill a stray survivor, but if that was the case, she would have been dead on the stairs. Why prioritize Ghost Face over her? 

“Let go! This is -- ” 

Claudette staggered into a classroom and looked around. There was a hole in the floor, but she couldn’t see any fog unless she looked out one of the windows. It was locked, and no amount of pounding on the glass even cracked it. No, she’d have to find a real way out. 

“God damn it, _why the hell won’t you listen_?!” 

The sound of the huge blade scraping the ground stopped, leaving an empty space that almost made her stumble. Her skin crawled. Her throat felt tight. 

As she hurried out of the room toward the end of the hall, she heard Ghost Face’s yelling turn into an enraged scream, suddenly cut off. 

There was a heavy _thump_ of the blade hitting the ground, two seconds of silence, and then the sound started again. 

At the end of the hall was another open space where the wall had crumbled away, leading into a room that didn’t look like it could have ever been in a school. Grim red light flooded down from above, and she tried to ignore the bodies hanging in cages as she peered down. Sometimes, before, there had been a way out here - 

And there was a way out now, in the place where the exit gate normally was. Instead of doors there was just an opening, and on the other side was a solid wall of fog. 

She looked behind herself, but the hall was empty. She looked down, but didn’t see anything dangerous - more dangerous than normal, anyway. This was her only chance. 

The drop hurt, but as she pushed herself back up and ahead she heard the scraping get louder. Claudette didn’t risk looking around until she was halfway out the door into the fog. 

He was standing there, on the other side of the room, his helmet fixed on her. There was fresh blood on his apron and while she couldn’t see it clearly, she _knew_ there would be more on the blade hanging from his hand. She hesitated for a few seconds before turning and running back into the fog. He probably wouldn’t follow her, but she didn’t want to take the chance of meeting the same fate as her initial attacker after surviving this long. 

The grayness went on and on, getting cooler, making her skin prickle. She didn’t think this time, just ran. If she ended up in another wrong place, getting hunted down again … she’d just have to find her way out. She’d survived _two_ of them in the last ten minutes. She could probably handle another one. 

Gray fog gave way to darkness. There was a jolt in her arm as her wounds suddenly closed up; the pain lingered, but it didn’t matter, because in the distance she could see the flickering light of the campfire. Relief melted off her like steam. 

Yui was still there when Claudette trotted back into the light and sat down hard. She glanced up, half-smiled, and then saw the bloody rips in her shirt. 

“What the hell happened? I thought you said you’d come back if you got into trouble.” 

Claudette opened the bag and pulled out the now-crushed plant. So much for replanting it, she thought distantly, but at least it was still useful for the medkit. 

“I wound up in the wrong place,” she said, setting the plant aside and turning the bag over to dump out the extra dirt. “Got caught.” 

“By who? They didn’t kill you, did they?” 

“No.” She looked down at the bag. There were a few more bloodstains on it than before, but at this point, they’d all gotten used to that. “I got lucky.” 

“Did they get you bad?” Yui leaned in and tugged at one of the rips with a scowl. 

“No. Just a couple stabs. Maybe Jake can fix those later.” 

“You can borrow my jacket until then, if you want.” Yui sat back and gave her a worried look. “What happened?” 

Claudette half-smiled, and told her. 

Yui almost choked from laughing so hard.  


* * *

  


“He cut me in half!” Danny raged, pacing back and forth in the flickering firelight of the ski lodge. “Didn’t even look at her twice! Just went for _me_ like I was some snotty little survivor!” 

“Just like last time, huh?” Frank sneered. Danny glared at him, but with two masks in the way, it didn’t make much of a point. 

“Shut the hell up. Let’s not forget the same thing happened to you.” 

“Yeah, but only once.” 

“ _You_ couldn’t manage to keep up with one of them long enough to wind up in the wrong place,” he snapped. 

Frank laughed at him. He could tell Julie was smiling under the mask. Joey was restraining a laugh, badly; Susie probably wasn’t laughing, but her mask was fucked up enough that he could never really tell what was going on underneath. 

“Don’t you idiots make fun of me,” he snarled. “Help me try to figure this out. What the hell’s his problem? Why go after _us_?” He stopped by the firepit. “If you had a choice between killing a survivor and killing me, which one would you pick?” 

Legion looked at each other, then back at him. Julie leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. 

“Is that supposed to be a trick question?” she asked sweetly.


End file.
